


Only Fear Me Not

by Stringgoblin



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, F/NB, Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Tam Lin with the serial numbers filed off
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:07:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25131373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stringgoblin/pseuds/Stringgoblin
Summary: Only the very brave or extremely foolhardy would venture out to the ghost town of Cartow, forgotten deep in the woods. Downed skycaptain Amelia Earhart happens to be both.
Relationships: Amelia Earhart/Celiquillithon "Cel" Sidebottom
Comments: 5
Kudos: 7





	Only Fear Me Not

**Author's Note:**

> This is set somewhere in North America, about 50 years pre-canon - turns out gnomes live for a really long time! The geography is entirely invented, and very little regard has been paid to pathfinder mechanics or lore.

“There’s got to be somewhere. What about that, what’s that?” Amelia pointed out a mark that was maybe a town or maybe just a smudge on the map, a day’s walk upriver. The lumberjack slowly shook his head.

“I wouldn’t.”

And left her standing there, just like that. Amelia sighed, and turned back to her balloon. Torn skin, severed cables, no spare gas canisters, and no mechanic and barely a general store in this podunk town. At least the cabin had survived intact. She wouldn’t be literally out on the street while she, what, tried to rubberise cotton in a saucepan.

The next trade caravan was due to come by in three weeks. If she was lucky, she could negotiate a haul to the nearest place worth being. More likely, she’d be able to cadge a lift and her balloon - her home - all her worldly possessions - would stay stuck here until she could somehow bring a small engineering works to it.

It started to rain. Amelia closed her eyes, breathed, and sought strength and balance as a drop rolled off the end of her nose.

“Fuck this.”

Bedroll, water skin, food, map, cutlass. At worst, it was just a smudge on the map and she’d have a couple nights’ uncomfortable camping. At best, well, who knows, she thought sourly as she trudged off along the riverbank. Maybe a magical talking fish who’ll grant me three wishes in exchange for my firstborn.

It was a full moon, and she kept going for most of the night before coming across a convenient hollow log and remembering that actually, sleep is important. She tucked herself into it headfirst, kicking up the end of her bedroll to block the open end, and dozed off with one hand on her cutlass. At one point she half-woke to something large scuffling around nearby, but it moved on after a while without coming close. Probably a bear, she assumed without much worry. There wasn't much out there that could find a gnome who didn’t want to be found.

The next day dawned bright and damp, sunlight shafting down between heavy clouds and dense branches. The river was full, but not worryingly so, and perfectly drinkable so far from any human settlements. A pair of elves paddled by in a coracle. They nodded. She nodded back. Always best to be polite.

About noon, Amelia sat on a rock and considered her map. The curve of the river matched up alright, but she still had a ways to go, and still no sign of what she was headed towards. She’d been following something that had clearly been used as a trail before, but whether by humans or elves or just bears and deer, she had no idea. Tracking: only a useful skill if you intend to spend time on the ground. Likewise foraging. She chewed a piece of jerky, eyeing some berries and considering whether they looked good, or good for poisoning people. Not worth risking it. 

Some distance behind the berry bush, something that she had taken for a tree  _ moved _ .

Amelia was under the bush, pressed flat to the ground, before her brain had fully caught up with her eyes.  _ Shit. _ There was  _ not _ supposed to be anything like that this far south. Nice cryptic warning, cryptic guy! It sure would have been too much trouble to say “there are things in the woods at least ten times your size, which will eat you!” Shit shit  _ shit. _

Branches creaked, cracked and snapped, and something thunderously loud crushed its way through the undergrowth towards the river. Amelia focused on breathing slowly, through her nose, and felt ice run down her spine as a shadow passed over the bush… and past. There was a tremendous splashing sound, and she realised that the creature was fording the river. She waited a solid ten minutes until the sounds of its movement disappeared completely into the woods again, and then another ten for her heart rate to at least begin to approach normal, before rolling out into the open.

The footprints - pawprints? Hoofprints? Tracking, again, not her strong suit - were about as long as she was tall. She stuck her head in the river to drown out the rising swell of panic, and reconsidered her options. Say for the sake of argument that some mapmaker had needed to come up with a symbol for “trade caravan massacred by unknown megafauna here” and settled on, oh, how about a smudge? Where did that leave her, a lone gnome out in the forest with no real plan and no-one else in the world who knew where she was? She took a proper look at her trusty cutlass. To something like that, it wouldn’t do much more than a papercut.

Amelia glared at the crushed bracken marking the creature’s exit from the river, jammed her hat back down over her ears, drew her cutlass, and marched onwards. Papercuts can bloody well sting.

Nothing else bothered her that afternoon. Any sensible inhabitants of these woods must have scarpered, leaving only insects, particularly stupid birds, and one bullheaded skycaptain whacking at ferns with the flat of her blade and cursing at roots, mudslicks, and thorny branches. She was reaching an almost zen state of mindless irritation at the world. The smudge would probably be nothing, and she’d return to her downed balloon cold and damp and bedraggled and bloody well pissed off, and able to properly focus on the problem at hand.

There was maybe an hour of daylight left when she noticed a distinct upward quality to the ground ahead, the riverbed becoming not quite a ravine, but definitely a gulch. The map showed the long, looping sweep of the river ahead, and suggested that about now would be the time to start cutting through the woods rather than along the bank. If she kept on straight, the river would curve around to meet her at the smudge and she could avoid the steepest slopes.

The discovery of a trailhead just as she started to look for a decent route through the trees was… disconcerting.

The path along the riverbank so far had been a scrappy, overgrown thing, but here there was a clearing with the remains of a campfire, trees with branches lopped off, and two neat stacks of rocks either side of a wide, clear track leading in exactly the direction she was headed. Each stack was topped with a bright white pebble, easily visible in the dark. No obvious footprints, but then presumably whoever made the campfire hadn’t been here since yesterday’s rain.

Okay then. Signs of life. Possibly even helpful life. This was promising, Amelia told herself firmly as she set off down the trail. Definitely promising, a good sign, and absolutely not a deeply spooky thing to find in the middle of goddamn nowhere.

Darkness fell, the colour slowly leaching out of her vision, but the moon was still plenty to see by. Amelia wasn’t too thrilled about the idea of camping right by this track. If the smudge turned out to actually be something, she’d much rather make it there tonight.

It turned out to actually be something about an hour after moonrise.

Amelia contemplated the burnt-out house silently. The wooden frame was completely black, windows empty, half of the upper storey fallen in. The forest had yet to fully reclaim the garden, but it wouldn’t take much longer. Ahead, she realised she could see more turnings off the trail, which had widened out into a proper road without her really noticing. A year or two ago, she would have been walking into town.

The road went on, and she passed silent, ruined house after silent, ruined house. Only a couple had caught fire. Most had just been abandoned to the elements. Some appeared to have been deliberately torn down, at least partially. The houses grew closer together until she found herself on a main street, with boardwalks, storefronts, even the remains of a statue in the centre of the square. The head and outstretched arm were missing, but the winged sandals were visible enough. Hermes was a decent god to pick if you were going to found a new town out here, Amelia thought. Didn’t seem to have done them much good, though. She scraped some moss off the plinth and read the dedication, and the town’s name.

“Cartow? Never heard of it.” 

There was a low, rumbling chuckle from  _ way _ too close behind her, and Amelia spun on her heel to confront something tall, pale, and mostly - but only mostly - humanoid.

**Author's Note:**

> Afraid I can't promise an update schedule as this is already the longest thing I've written in a really long time, but there is a plot and it will get written!


End file.
